Second Thoughts on Stewardship in Higher Education

Written by: Jeffrey Ross, Ed.D. and Jann M. Contento, Ph.D.

Stewardship is frequently identified with fund raising and gifting. But stewardship has meaning in many different contexts—for example, environmental stewardship, church stewardship, and data stewardship. Kay Herr Gillespie (Rumination: A Concept of Stewardship Applied to Higher Education) contends that being a steward "is not to have ownership of something, but rather to have the responsibility of taking care of something on behalf of another." For our purposes, we will discuss stewardship as an active organizational (and cultural) function within higher education.

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